Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Don't go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention!

Don sent me this:
A young and successful executive was travelling down aneighborhood street, going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar. He was watching for kids darting out from between parked cars and slowed down when he thought he saw something. As his car passed, no children appeared. Instead, a brick smashed into the Jag's side door! He slammed on the brakes and backed the Jag back to the spot where the brick had been thrown. The angry driver then jumped out of the car, grabbed the nearestkid and pushed him up against a parked car shouting, "What was that all about and who are you? Just what the heck are you doing? That's a new car and that brick you threw is going to cost a lotof money. Why did you do it?" The young boy was apologetic. "Please, mister...please, I'm sorry but I didn't know what else to do," He pleaded. "I threw the brick because no one else would stop..." With tearsdripping down his face and off his chin, the youth pointed to a spot just around aparked car.
"It's my brother," he said.
"He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can't lift him up." Now sobbing, the boy asked the stunned executive, "Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair? He's hurt and he's too heavy for me."Moved beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidlyswelling lump in his throat. He hurriedly lifted the handicapped boy back into the wheelchair, then took out a linen handkerchief and dabbed atthe fresh scrapes and cuts. A quick look told him everything was going to be okay.
"Thank you and may God bless you," the grateful child told the stranger. Too shook up for words, the man simply watched the boy push hiswheelchair-bound brother down the sidewalk toward their home. It was a long, slow walk back to the Jaguar. The damage was very noticeable, but the driver never bothered to repair the dented side door. He kept the dent there to remind him of this message
"Don't go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention!"

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

The shortest bath to my target: your heart.

It’s much harder than you think to do nothing, and much, much more important than you believe that you can to do everything… While doing nothing I like to hide out in the Little Acorn house or the "house of miracles", here in Leamington and write my theses. This is my holiday plan.
While doing everything I like to look at the sky. It is not blue and infinite. There are lots for everything for miles around. Behind short or long distances there is people’s desire to spread social links all over the globe. As they add more links, distance between people suddenly collapses…..
From my window everything looks easy and difficult at the same time. Things are easy to find in a small world. People are difficult to find in the same global village, because there are an enormous number of paths with widely different lengths between any two people….even between you and me. I was not aware of the shortest path….I did not have a compass. I did not know if the entrance was towards the north or south…..
…and a perfect stranger taught me that people on the other side of the planet are sometimes closer than people living next door…………
The view from my window is like a painting of Picasso…..
Definitely want to do some art. Might make a painting; write a poem; or write another paragraph for my chapter…..
I will just have another nap…..and dream of you my “sunshine”.……..
Ironically, the world will be collapsed irreversibly in my dream. This is the shortest bath to my target: YOUR HEART.

Both nodes together or separately will be happy ever after

I am interested in complex systems…..When graph theory deals with complex systems as the internet, the cell, or even cocktail parties the regular graphs contain many ambiguities about their structure. Real graphs (as real relationships) from social networks to phone lines are not regular and nice. These graphs are hopelessly complicated. Humbled by their complexity some mathematicians assumed that these networks are random.
Humbled by this complexity and confusion a love story started randomly with 2 isolated nodes, me and a special someone. We decided that the simplest way to create “our love story” was to play dice: If you roll a six, place a link between us. For many other roll of the dice, do not connect us but cut a link or choose a different node and add a link. Therefore, the love story of me and the special someone was represented as fundamentally random.
We randomly added links between us …..we enjoyed playing dice… we believed that there are enough links between us……we believed that were connected with this simple and elegant way. But one morning a miracle happened: There were no connections between us, no links…. nothing.I was crying because I realised that random networks played no role in assembling the pieces of my heart….and then I hated the random graph theory. I hated maths. I could not believe that the more links we add, the harder it is to find a node that remains isolated, because I was this isolated node, full of fear and anxiousness….
Unfortunately, I was not lucky as the average neuron that is connected to dozens of others, some to thousands……I was taught that in my body the molecules take part in far more than a single reaction- some in hundreds. I was taught that there are very dense networks from which nothing can escape and within which every node is navigable…. I was taught that I cannot escape.
One day I took the risk: Let’s navigate along the links between other nodes…
You are not brave but you can escape…….….
I enjoyed the navigation.. ….I was not brave, but I was curious. I passed from a “special male” node. He was playing violin…..I decided to stay there for a day…And this is the time for my fairytale: girl meets a man, girl writes now her theses, girl loves to live with the man, man loves to live with the girl, girl loves the man, man loves the girl.........it does not matter if the fairytale continues ...because we all agree that when a pair of nodes connected in a relationship, something special happens: The network after placing a critical number of links, drastically changes. We have a giant cluster and both nodes together or separately will be happy ever after.